Pasture Walk at the Judy Farm

Sometimes the best way to learn something new is to visit another farmer or rancher to see how they do things. With that in mind, Greg Judy sent us this video so that you can take a virtual visit to his farm in Missouri. It shows him moving his cattle from one pasture to the next as they graze winter stockpile. In this 4 minute video he’ll show you what stockpile looks like when the cattle are finished with it and compare it to ungrazed stockpile. He also talks about how he sets up his cattle for a mile long move. You’ll see how easy it can be when the cattle understand the system and know what to expect and why they don’t need a back fence. He’s stocking his cows at about 150,000 pounds per acre density, so you’ll get to see what that looks like.

About the author

Kathy worked with the Bureau of Land Management for 12 years before founding Livestock for Landscapes in 2004. Her twelve years at the agency allowed her to pursue her goal of helping communities find ways to live profitably AND sustainably in their environment. She has been researching and working with livestock as a land management tool for over a decade. When she's not helping farmers, ranchers and land managers on-site, she writes articles, and books, and edits videos to help others turn their livestock into landscape managers.

2 Comments

I have a nagging question. We calve on stockpile in (gasp!) March and April. We also supplement on the pasture. Knowing that the cows get some of their feed requirements from the supplemented feed (easy to calculate), some from the stockpile (less easy to calculate), and some from new growth (difficult to calculate), I would like a reasonably accurate way to calculate animal unit days for the pasture without spending a half day staring at my records.
Thoughts?